Welcome

Remember those first trips you took to the science museum? Remember feeling wonder and awe learning about how things function on our planet? Were the hands-on exhibits your favorite? These kinds of questions may be difficult to answer if you grew up a racial minority in a poor community. Why? Because our society designs science museums–and all science learning and communication activities–for a narrow audience. A new study explores how we got here and suggests more inclusive ways to communicate science to a broad public.

Coastal wetlands provide invaluable ecological and economic services for our coastal communities. To keep pace with sea level rise, these habitats need space to migrate upland. This may present a challenge in some highly urbanized areas. A recent study that calculated open and developed land near wetlands along the Southeastern coast of the United States sheds light on the fate of coastal wetlands at a regional scale, and provides context for improved coastal resilience efforts.

One-third of the world’s food is lost or wasted. But the biggest loss, not included in this estimate, may be through our dietary choices. Consuming meat entails significantly more food loss than consuming plants directly. Favoring plant-based diets in America would produce enough food to feed 350 million additional people – more than would be fed if all conventional food supply chain losses were eliminated.

Droughts and extreme flooding have devastating effects in India’s rice-growing areas. New research shows that female farmers are using their ancestral knowledge and promoting a culture of sharing to help their crops adapt to climate change while keeping their families alive.

Climate change is already wreaking havoc on the world’s oceans. New research suggests that managing fisheries with climate change in mind could preserve this important food source for future generations.

Pacific women have long been marginalized in the conversations surrounding climate change adaptation. And yet, they have been quietly leading the way towards a climate resilient future in their communities.

Farmers in rural areas must engage with surrounding wildlife to protect their livelihoods. Development and human-wildlife conflict threaten large predators living near human settlements. In a study from a national park in Bhutan, researchers found that tigers in forested areas near farmlands can have large-scale impacts in the ecosystem that lead to fewer agricultural losses. The indirect benefits tigers bring to farmers could have important wildlife conservation implications.

Urban gardens can attract some of nature’s most beautiful pollinators. A new study brings us on an exciting journey to understand the nuances of complex networks of butterflies and flowers. Scientists use this new information to recommend the best flowers to sustain urban populations of both common and rare butterflies.

Christine Ventura

January 10, 2019

Articles

The Sahara Desert is one of the driest regions on Earth and is exposed to a tremendous amount of wind and sunlight. Encouraging new research shows that installing a large number of wind and solar power plants in this arid environment could increase rainfall and encourage plant growth.

Land rights conflicts are a well-known problem in the expansion of industrial plantations in the Global South. To resolve conflicts, the disputing groups tend to choose mediation instead of an inefficient formal court system. Despite the advantages of mediation, findings from Indonesia show that mediation is incomplete without addressing wider injustices in land rights issues.

Groundwater managers have a difficult time getting a sense of how much water farmers and urban water users extract from aquifers. Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) is a satellite technology that uses microwaves to generate data that researchers use to build Earth gravity models. The models produced from GRACE data help water managers know how much water farmers and urban water planners have withdrawn from the ground. This helps communities manage their groundwater resources sustainably.

Crowdfunding is becoming an increasingly popular source of support for biodiversity conservation. A recent study reveals an expansive global crowdfunding network for conservation that brings much-needed support for research and species-focused projects. Researchers explored how this new fundraising mechanism might impact conservation, both financially and beyond.

Ecotourism in Kenya is celebrated as a win-win solution that benefits both cheetahs and humans. Tourists get to see cheetahs in their natural habitat while funding wildlife preserves. But what happens to cheetah cubs when they are surrounded by overeager visitors? A new study examines how ecotourism affects cheetah cubs’ chance at survival.

Coral reefs are fragile ecosystems that support an abundance of marine life. Climate change and human activities threaten the existence of these reefs. In Maui, scientists found that treated wastewater seeps into coral reefs and causes coral degradation at an alarmingly high rate.

E-waste is frequently exported to developing countries and are recycled manually, polluting the air, soil and water and affecting workers and vulnerable communities. The Basel Convention is an international treaty created to counter that. However, enforcement and monitoring is lacking. Researchers and the Basel Action Network took matters into their own hands.

Human development has disconnected thousands of acres of U.S. salt marsh from life-giving tidal flows. New research has found that restoring tidal flows to salt marshes can be an important intervention to slow the rate of climate change.

The staff at Yale Environment Review would like to announce the winner and finalists for the first-everEditor’s Choice Competition.

Eleven articles, all written by past or present YER authors who are still at FES, were judged by the YER team of writers. From that eleven, three finalists were selected. The final decision was made by the editorial board at the end of the fall semester.

Yale Environment Review (YER) is a student-run review that provides weekly updates on environmental research findings. YER aims to bridge the gap between environmentally-related academic research and its application to policy and management. In order to increase access to specialized information, YER publishes readable and concise summaries of original, peer-reviewed literature so that it can be useful to those engaged in the field of environmental and natural resource management.